Ireland’s Tanaiste, or deputy prime minister, Simon Harris, defended the government’s position on Thursday that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza, Irish broadcaster RTE reported.

“We are the first government in the European Union (EU) to say what Israel is doing is genocide. It is genocide,” Harris told an opposition lawmaker during a heated exchange in parliament, known as the the Dáil.

Catherine Connolly, an independent, accused the government of not doing enough to punish Israel for its 19-month-long war on Gaza, which has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

“I’m disgusted and sickened, sickened – watching children dying on our television screens and every day I come to work, and work with all the people in here to do our best to show leadership at a time of horrific conflict,” Harris said.

“We’re working to support the people of Palestine and the only chamber I ever go into in the entire world where people don’t acknowledge that Ireland, the government, the people of Ireland, are standing with the people of Palestine, standing up for human rights, standing up for international law, is here when you get up and distort – with your ideology – the actions of this government.”

Ireland recognised Palestinian statehood one year ago, and in January, it joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

On Thursday, Harris said that a bill banning trade with goods from Israeli settlements – deemed illegal under international law – would move to the foreign affairs committee next month, the Irish Times said.

The government is also under pressure to help remove the Central Bank’s role in permitting the sale of Israel bonds in the EU, and to stop any flights over Ireland that may be carrying weapons to Israel, the paper reported.

“I’m proud of the people of this country. I’m proud that we went into an election, and it didn’t matter what party you were in, you stood up and said, ‘We are going to support the people of Palestine’.”

Harris’s stance was backed by the taoiseach – or prime minister, Micheal Martin, earlier in the week.

“We have been very consistent in our support to the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination, and in condemning the war crimes and the genocide that is occurring right now,” Martin told the Dail.

“The focus has to be relentlessly on the policies of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government, made up of extreme far-right elements who are committing genocide in Gaza right now.”

In 2018, the Occupied Territories Bill was introduced in Ireland by Independent Senator Frances Black, proposing a ban on trade with businesses operating in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, but it was ultimately blocked over concerns about breaching EU trade rules.

However, an advisory opinion from the ICJ in July marked a turning point in reconsidering the enactment of the Irish bill.

The ICJ concluded that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is “unlawful” and the country should “end its presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as rapidly as possible”.

More than 400 of Ireland’s senior legal academics and practising lawyers have called on the government to enact the bill in its original form, prohibiting all goods and services in the occupied West Bank, such as Airbnb.